A Caroline County[Virginia] woman was sentenced to 10 days in jail yesterday for defying a court order not to smoke around her daughter and son.
Tamara Silvius, 44, was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom by deputies, The Associated Press reported. Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Judge John H. Thomas said Silvius could post a $500 bond while she appeals his ruling.
Thomas last August barred Silvius from smoking around the children, now ages 8 and 10, as part of her shared-custody arrangement with her ex-husband. She violated the order during a trip to South Carolina for Thanksgiving when she taped plastic inside her car to keep the smoke from reaching her children.
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"He wants the children to spend time with their mother. He just wants them to be safe from cigarette and alcohol abuse," Murphy said.
Murphy wasn't in the Caroline courtroom yesterday, but he said he wasn't surprised that the judge imposed jail time.
"If you continue to violate a court order, a judge is not going to stand for that," he said.
Tamara Silvius, a pack-a-day smoker, claims the restriction violates her rights.
Murphy recalled an earlier hearing when Tamara Silvius was asked what she would do if she were required to give up smoking as a condition of seeing her children. "I think she amazed most people in the courtroom when she said, 'I guess I wouldn't see my kids, then,'" Murphy recalled.
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In 1612 an English colonist named John Rolfe, introduced a milder variety of tobacco to the Virginia colony. The English colonists quickly learned they could make a lot of money by growing and exporting tobacco from Virginia to England. Growing tobacco provided a good source of income for the farmers in Virginia. Tobacco became the most profitable agricultural product in the Virginia colony; without which, the colony would have failed.
The Central Rappahannock Regional Library
Tobacco production in Virginia (in pounds):
| Type of Tobacco | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flue-Cured (Type 11) | 62,920,000 | 42,700,000 | 48,585,000 | 50,955,000 |
| Burley (Type 31) | 23,108,000 | 11,200,000 | 12,474,000 | 13,680,000 |
| Fire (Type 21) | 2,672,000 | 2,548,000 | 2,202,000 | 1,440,000 |
| Sun (Type 37) | 155,000 | 165,000 | 154,000 | 105,000 |
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"Currently, the USDA does not test imported flue-cured and burley tobacco for ANY of the dangerous pesticides the EPA has added to the list of pesticides banned domestically for tobacco farming since 1989. Consequently, there are more than thirty dangerous pesticides that can legally be on imported tobacco that cannot be used by American tobacco farmers. The residues from these pesticides constitute an unacceptable public health risk to users of tobacco products.
"In addition to being a public health risk, the use of these domestically banned pesticides constitutes an unfair trade advantage for foreign tobacco growers. The increased tobacco yields that foreign growers can get by using these dangerous pesticides reduces the costs of production and contributes to foreign growers' ability to sell their tobacco at a lower price than American tobacco farmers. Today, approximately 50% of the tobacco processed in America was grown in a foreign country. These dangerous foreign tobacco imports have greatly contributed to the economic plight of American tobacco farmers.
"It's unspeakable that the government declares that dozens of pesticides are so dangerous to smokers that American tobacco farmers can't use them�and then that same government turns around and allows foreign tobacco farmers put these poisons in smokers' lungs.
"American farmers can grow more than enough tobacco to satisfy the entire domestic demand for the crop. Local farmers are being forced to destroy literally tons of unsold American tobacco because cigarette companies are buying dangerous, pesticide-covered, foreign tobacco instead.
"Giving the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products makes sense. I bet that if the FDA had this authority before, American smokers wouldn't have been exposed to the DDT and other harmful pesticides commonly present in foreign tobacco�"
What Al Weed said rings a bell there. It occurred to me a long time back that the non-regulation of pesticides generally during the heyday of DDT and Chlordane, the 50's and 60's, might have more than a little to do with the epidemic of lung cancer deaths.
The numbers will probably show that even when the heavy pesticides were outlawed on food they were still being showered on tobacco, because it wasn't technically a food. Though any veteran of the drug wars will tell you smoking is a more efficient delivery system than eating most any chemical. But that pesticide thing, funny how it's always all about the tobacco, never the additives, or the residues of toxic poisons.
Big money in bad medicine.
Al Weed sounds like a clear-headed, valiant guy. And he's sticking up for people who are paying the price for somebody else's wrong-doing.
It's a little too pat and simple-minded to keep pretending tobacco use was always a personal choice, a matter of personal responsibility, given the societal propaganda and brainwashing that was pro tobacco use for most of the 20th century . Exchanging that subliminal coercion for its opposite hasn't liberated anybody.
And it's weak and ultimately irresponsible to leave a lot of hard-working farmers with nothing and nowhere to turn, because of the sudden shift in the behavioral economy.
All this smarmy crap about protecting the children. When the largest single killer of children is riding in cars. Not to mention 380 million gallons of gas a day in the US. That's a lot of smoke right there.
The brainwash is so thorough - I keep saying this - if you ask most 10 year-olds which they'd rather do: be locked in a windowless room with 3 people smoking cigarettes all day, or locked in a windowless room with their family car running all day...they'll pick the car.
That's nothing but brainwash. There's no morality, it's just a change of subliminal program. And the real villain, as usual, goes free.
Mr. Weed's constituents have children, a lot of them probably have a family tradition of tobacco farming that goes back over a hundred years. Pretending they're the cause of harm, and making them pay the price, is weak, and wrong.
Think for a change.
